10.000 HITS !!!!!!

The Zangali Blog receives 10.000 hits in 3 months !

I was incredibly happy when I checked the Hit-counter for this Blog. The people of Zangali have had over 10.000 visitors and all that within the first 3 months is an incredible and unexpected success.
When I started this Blog I thought it would be a nice medium to keep track of my progress in developing a new Wargame in an imaginary nation but I didn't think it would be this popular. The idea is to post articles of finished miniatures, Scenery projects, battle reports, trying out wargaming rule sets and creating fictional news as a back drop for the blog.

Modifying MDF Buildings

Let's have a look at the figures;
Most popular are the articles about how I created the scenery. On the 15th of June I posted an article on creating jungle terrain. to this day it is still the biggest success of the blog with 1.602 Hits*. Another big hit on the blog is also a scenery related article, Modifying laser cut MDF buildings was posted on the 4th of July and received 1498 hits*. With 25 posts in total these two articles alone take over a quarter of the hits so it's safe to say that Scenery related articles are very popular.

The famous ZangaLions

At the other end the lowest number of hits are on the News articles. I post a fictional bit of news now and then to bring Zangali more to life. Well at least to me. It helps me create a back drop for my games and helps me envision new projects. I can imagine this is not to everyone's taste but I also get good feedback on it. I think the main reason for the low hits(in comparison) is the fact that I don't share these articles, don't put them on my facebook page or on any of the forums I visit. On average a News article gets about 60 hits but there's one that seems to be the favourite with 150 hits* and that's the Africa Cup 2017 News post. I will continue posting the news articles because I enjoy writing them and make Zangali come to life.

Then where from do people travel to Zangali? Our beloved country seems to be most popular by people from the US and UK, together good for over 5.000 visitors*. But the department of tourist information also see large groups of Australians, French, Spanish, German, Canadian, Irish and of course Dutch check in. They get here by many different ways, Facebook seems to be the most popular to find Zangali with just over 3.000 hits* but also "the Miniatures Page" is a good way to visit Zangali with over 1.000 hits*, the "Lead Adventure Forum" counts for a good 500+ hits*. After that there are many other smaller numbers of visitors coming to Zangali by other sites. Of course Google brings people to our country but I also want to give a special mention to Studio Tomahawk where my tutorial on making jungle terrain is linked and liked by at least 110 visitors*. All these small numbers really add up and result in more then 10.000 hits now.

I like to thank all the other Bloggers that have my on their Blogroll, People that share my articles on Facebook and Google+ . A special thanks for the regular people that comment on my posts,you know who you are. I really really appreciate it and like to read what you think of the Blog.

So tell me, what do you... like the best? ..want to see anything changed? ..Do I need to add something?  let me know in the comments down below.

*: Number of hits registered by July 11th 2016

Modifying laser cut MDF Buildings

I love using laser cut MDF buildings. They are relatively cheap, easy to build and plenty to chose from. When I build my WW2 French Normandy table I used 6 4Ground building but more about those at the bottom of this page, this is the zangali blog remember.

For Zangali I have thus far only used Sarissa Precision buildings. I'm using the "Far East" buildings. I have 2 houses, a watch tower and a small radar station. The laser cut buildings come quite plain and are unpainted but they are a nice base to start off with. 

First I add some sand to the bases and then paint all the buildings in various brown tones. You can be a bit messy at this stage, it will even make it more realistic. Once the paint is dry I used some shades of ink and washed the whole model. You can lengthen your ink with a bit of water. Once that was dry I dry brushed the whole thing with some light brown / grey paints. Of course I also painted the base with the same colors as I used for my gaming table to match it. That was basically all the painting I did.
To the tower I made some major changes. I didn't really liked the walls of the original so I cut those out and green stuffed some sand bags. I also painted up a bit of bandage in some camo colors and torn the bottom off to make it look ragged.
All the roofs in this far east set are quite plain and simple and look a bit off to me so I bought a bamboo sweeper at the local pound store and cut some of the bristles off and used that for the roofing. You can see it makes a big difference. If I would do it again I would make it look more like two small layers instead of one big one but hey...

This building has just been re-roofed and painted, nothing major but it makes a big difference

At the start of this article I also said I have used 4Ground buildings in an earlier project and even though it has nothing to do with the Zangali project I do want to show you them here as it is just another example of how you can add your own creativity to a pre painted building. 

4Ground French Garage

The problem I had with the 4ground buildings is that they look really polished, plain and all look the same. Also if you put them on a grass matt like most of us do they look out of place and usually don't fit in with the gaming table.

To tackle those things I did a couple of things. First of all I googled for tiled flooring, carpets and wallpapers, just printed them on paper and glued them inside the rooms. They all look different now but not from the outside so I added some climbing plants to the walls and again printed some posters and such. I didn't go for the war propaganda posters that you often see but tried to make it look like a normal small French country village with a cafe, Garage and a bombed house (although the bomb just missed the house 

The whole thing is on a MDF base, the cobble stones are just textured wall paper and then painted and washed. I added a little shed made of coffee stirring sticks some walls, 2 gas pumps from my son's old garage set and some lose bits and pieces that fit in this setting. And YES, that is Mater from Cars. everybody always asks me that. I did repaint and changed him a bit but somehow he is still recognisable.

For this destroyed house I just put the whole thing on a MDF base again. The wall paper cobble stone is also the same and blends in with my road sections of the gaming table. I just used a Games Workshop crater to create the impact point just next to the building. Even though it missed the following explosion still destroyed most of the house. A direct hit would have destroyed it completely. With all the lose debris sprinkled loosely on the base it creates the feeling of total destruction a a heavy bomb

4Ground destroyed detached house

And lastly no French village can do without a Café. I can just envision René Artois from "allo allo" there going round with some drinks while planning how to get his hands on the fallen Madonna with the big boobies.

I think you get the idea now of how I made this. I must say that the chairs are from 4Ground also but the tables are made by me.

The last tip I have really is that I flocked the edges of the MDF bases with the same flock as my gaming table so the buildings blend in perfectly

4Ground French Cafe

Here's a shot of the Normandy table in action:

4Ground Normandy gaming table

A look behind the scenes

Since we are just beginning this journey I thought it would be nice to show you, the reader where the physical side of the Zangali project comes to live. This is my work station. This is where I build and paint the models and scenery. I like to keep everything at arms length so I can just sit down and work. My work station isn’t always as tidy as you see it in the pictures. When I start a new project, say a unit, tank or some bits of scenery I try to start with an empty desk but during the project I tend forget my Clean Desk Policy and there are bottles of paint, glue, sprues, etc, etc everywhere and I end up with a working space of about 12”x 12”. I have bought a lot of different hobby tools over the past 10 years and not in this picture is the mountain of stuff I have accumulated to use one day for a special project, a bit of scenery or just can’t part with. 

I currently use two types of paint. I still have a lot of citadel paints from the time I did a lot of Games Workshop but in the past 3 years I have made the transition to Vallejo paints. I have about 100 Citadel pots and about 150 Vallejo bottles I use. I have an airbrush that I use for priming and base coating infantry models, vehicles are painted mostly with the airbrush (Harder & Steenbeck evolution silverline) but I use a normal brush for the details on infantry models.

In these pictures you can see I’m doing a lot of Bolt Action. For the past 3 years I have made a couple of gaming tables, boxes full of scenery and 4 different armies. I have a British, US Marines, Germans and Japanese army and all armies range from 1200 to 3000 points. I have two Ikea Detolf cabinets in which I keep some of my painted models. Not really clear in this picture but at the bottom of the cabinets you can see my 40K Orks, my first love so to speak and they are still very dear to me. 

The start of an Imagi-Nation

Black Ops demo by Guy Bowers

It was only a couple of months ago when I was at a Dutch wargaming convention called Poldercon that the seed of creating a fictional nation of my own (Imagi-Nation) was planted. I have always been thinking of cool scenarios and rules for wargaming in a modern setting but I just never started writing things down, I didn't even had any modern range miniatures. For the past three years I have been really busy with Bolt Action and promoting it in the Netherlands. I have a few demo tables, a ton of scenery and four different armies but all WW2. Before that I played a few different games and all in all I have been wargaming for nearly ten years.

Osprey - Black Ops

At Poldercon I was doing another demo for Bolt Action and I got talking with Guy Bowers who was doing a demo game of Black Ops for which he wrote the rules. The game looked fun and eventually I sat down for an hour and let Guy talk me through the rules. Boy it was fun! I went straight to the Stand of Imaginative Miniatures who were also at the convention and were selling the Black Ops rulebook. Of course I asked Guy if he could sign my copy which he did.

In the weeks that followed I started doing some research to see what modern rule sets were available and during my search I also found some blogs about these weird African Imagination countries. Bongolesia, Zugando & Natonga to name a few. I thought this was a wonderful idea, you just make up your own country and regime and throw in some cliche characters with a unique background story and place your wargames in that scene for which you can use multiple rule sets.

Then I also received my copy of the Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine (issue 83) which was all about modern wargaming and even has an article on creating your own Imagi-Nation. This issue came at precisely the right time and I started thinking about my own Nation, I had to think about names, places, characters and a complete story and the more I got into it the more I enjoyed it.

As a result I now have a ton of raw material for stories and scenarios for the following months. A lot of modern 28 miniatures to paint and I have already built a complete Jungle table including mountains, a river, a guerrilla camp and a lot of jungle terrain. I can't wait to get playing and tell you guys all about it.

Make sure you visit Zangali once in a while to keep up with the News, Battle report, scenery building, tutorials and loads more.

Guy Bowers vs Richard Clarke

Here's a funny picture I don't want to keep from you. Guy Bowers (black ops) and Richard Clarke (Chain of Command Fighting season) were talking about their games. Both telling eachother their games were the best (tongue in cheek). well let's say it was a very amusing hour seeing these guys duke it out and just having fun. Great lads!